12 May 2009 8:30 AM

Whisper Who Dares? The real meaning of the Commons expenses scandal

Mr Tony Dodd complained (on 8th May): ‘And what of our corrupt politicians? Not a whisper.’ I wonder what Mr Dodd sought to imply by this? But in any case, I had better explain why I have held off on this subject till now.

On Friday and on Saturday the newspaper which bought the information published almost nothing but the details of Labour MPs and Ministers' expense claims. I happen to think this was the wrong approach. They had in their possession the claims of all MPs of all parties, and knew perfectly well (as did all journalists who have any knowledge of the situation) that the Tories were as deep in the mud as Labour. To devote two days exclusively to the misdeeds of Labour was to give the impression that this was a party-political scandal. It is not. If anyone votes Tory on the basis of it, then he or she is wholly illogical. But I fear this kind of illogical behaviour is common, and that the presentation of the facts in this way appeals to it.

Because that newspaper possessed the exclusive story, others (including the BBC) could only follow the same facts, and in the same order.

Now the details of Tory behaviour have begun to come out, I think we can now examine this business properly. It is a very serious scandal. But the difficulty any commentator has is to know what to suggest to put things right. An election might clear the air for a month or two, but if it simply resulted in extra Tory votes it would in my opinion achieve nothing of any significance. For unless voters were more particular than they usually are at general elections, when anyone can get in if he has the right party label, that would mean the re-election of large numbers of people whose expenses do not bear much scrutiny.

The real problem is that the whole nature of an MP's task and duties has changed as the adversarial party system has disappeared during the last 30 years. This is why MPs didn't grasp, until the public noticed, that they were doing anything wrong. They thought these things were the normal perks of their jobs.

Jobs? Yes, that is what they think they are. They even refer to politics as a 'profession' as if they were accountants, lawyers or doctors, whereas in fact it's a trade, learned on the job, like journalism, and a refuge for people who can't or won't submit to the discipline of a real profession. Yes, you can say the same about journalism if you like, and I won't entirely disagree with you, but scribblers don't live at the taxpayer's expense and what influence we have tends to restrain power, rather than strengthen and centralise it.

To some extent, any MP elected in the old days had to be a warrior of some kind, who had done battle in the conflict between Left and Right. In those days, the opposing armies of Labour and Tory were large, with mass memberships, busy social lives, regular meetings. You had to put in a lot of work in these legions before you came anywhere near a selection committee, and in most cases you would be in your 40s before such a committee would even look at you.

So by then you would have had to have had some sort of real job, perhaps brought up some children, paid your bills, run out of money, seen how others lived, led a strike, run a business, met a payroll, won a few court cases (or lost some) even fought in a war. Also, you would have come up through a party machine which was deeply distinct from the other side's. You were partisan out of duty, as much as anything else, and you recognised the almost impossible divide between you and the other lot. If you had any sympathy with them, you kept quiet about it. It was your job to be adversarial. There were people in the Labour Party who might have been at home in the Tories, and vice versa, but they were much rarer than such people are now, and they didn't tend to defect, or give comfort to the enemy.

In short, MPs were older, more experienced, more wedded to their political tribe, more conscious of why they were there and who had put them there, and either well-off on their own account or used to living at a reasonable level through their own efforts. I might add that in those days, when people still knew who their local councillors were, MPs also had much less of a burden from constituents seeking help with drains, schools and rats. So they could and did spend more time in the chamber, and less writing and answering sad letters.

Now, here's an interesting point that once crossed my mind when I dabbled (famously) with Parliamentary ambitions. I never expected to be nominated, but I'd read enough stories of people who'd been catapulted unexpectedly into the Commons in by-elections (and I'd seen such episodes) so I did give some thought to it.

Here is the question: who is an MP's employer?

I believe the salaries themselves are paid by a Quango called the House of Commons Commission. But, as the new MP walks in on his first day, swears his oath and takes his seat, who is he actually working for? It is like no other job - if it is a job at all (which I think it isn't).

Technically, and ideally, he is of course working for his constituents. But in truth this is rarely so. The people who have most impact on his life are the Party Whips, themselves the hired hands either of Downing Street or of the Leader of the Opposition's poky office near Big Ben.

The new MP rapidly finds out that if he pleases the whips nice things happen to him. And if he displeases them, a life of miserable obscurity on tedious standing committees looms, quite possibly followed by nasty rumours about him in his constituency and an early, ignominious de-selection. Whips gather gossip and scandal, and use it, and many of them have not been above what might in other trades pass as intimidation.

Someone in his fifties who's raised a family, who's been a shop steward, or run his own engineering factory, or fought in a tank battle, or prosecuted murderers in front of a jury is not going to be terribly impressed or scared by the whips. But someone barely out of his or her teens who's been nothing more than another MP's dogsbody, or a 'special adviser,' or a local government official, is likely to be a pushover. He's an employee of the executive, anxious to please. And, like all employees who have sold a large chunk of his integrity in return for a quiet life, he'll expect something back for it.

There's promotion to the ministerial elite, of course. But that's only for the government party and even the most outrageous government can't make every MP a minister. So the pay-off has to be made in a different way to those who can never hope to be ministers, or have had their turn and muffed it. And so the allowances have suited both a government which wanted compliant servants, and a new breed of MPs who saw politics as a career and quite reasonably expected the perquisites that normally go with such a career.

The less politics there is in Parliament, the more MPs will become like this, and if you want MPs who aren't greedy for expenses, then you are going to have to accept that MPs need to be older, grouchier, more partisan, less inclined to be pushed around.There's another crucial part of this. They also need more to do. The takeover of so much legislation by the EU has left British MPs rubber-stamping Brussels directives which come racing through the procedures so fast that nobody even has time to read them properly. There's no real division because there's no real choice, the EU directives must pass unaltered anyway, and all the major parties have secretly reconciled themselves to this, without telling the voters. In fact they often conceal the EU element in legislation, and have to be compelled to admit that it is so.

My fear is that this scandal will be much more like a French scandal than a British one. Rather than being confined to a few individuals, it will discredit the House of Commons itself. Now, unlike France, Britain has benefited greatly from having several powerful and respected institutions. If these start to collapse, then the way is open for nasty demagogues who would once have been restrained by the Commons, and kept from power.

This would be very much the wrong outcome (as would be a Tory victory on the slipstream of a scandal in which the Tories are implicated). The right outcome would be a revival of our Parliament as it ought to be, adversarial, peopled with strong individuals who do not regard politics as a 'profession' but who think that it is an honour to be an MP and who are too busy scrutinising legislation and harrying the government to be filling in expense claims for bath-plugs, lavatory seats and the rest. For how to achieve that, see above.

Just been looking at the British Constitution Group you mentioned. i hadn't heard of them before. I don't know much about them but I like the fact that some people care enough about our constitution, well, whatever's left of it...

"UKIP are snobs and oafs, the BNP are foul, deranged racist idiots, the Lib Dems are useless tax and spenders, Labour are the worst party in the world, the Tories as Hitchens says, are not gutsy on the EU by any means, and the Greens are a bunch of enviro-loons.
Hey, if I stand, would you lot vote for me?!
The Boatang&Demetriou Party. Surely worth a punt."

In a nutshell, that is a worthy summary of where we are today. I think I'd vote for you but I do recall that sometime ago I promised Wesley Crosland I'd vote for his credo. It might cause a conflixt of loyalties...

Rash?

Possibly. But I can't help thinking that you two have more common ground than you might think. I'm sure you would both get on like a house on fire were you to meet someday....

One good thing which might still with a little goodwill and give-and-take emerge from the current allegations of irregular expenses claims by some MPs would, I suggest, be that members of Parliament might contrive to do a kind of deal with the electorate, whereby both any MPs and any ordinary citizens who have tardily realised how "sloppy" some of their "accounting" may have been be granted freedom from prosecution, provided that any monies owing be repaid in full.
At a time when prisons are reported to be so overpopulated that some convicted persons have to be released early in order to make room for new arrivals, it would surely make far more sense to punish any convicted of merely financial irregularities by fines rather than imprisonment.
If suggestions of financial wrongdoing by our parliamentary representatives should give rise to investigations by police with a view to prosecutions - which may Heaven forbid - wouldn't that be the perfect time for our rulers and their executives to begin to treat financial misdemeanours differently from the plainly more serious offences involving violence and in the process to relieve the taxpayer of having to pay for the upkeep of 'financial' prisoners whose servitude might be more profitably spent in carrying on working in order to repay in full any outstanding debts.
After all, as I'm sure some MPs would agree, when all's said and done, it's only money.

John DeMetriou: re. the EU, the whole thing is quite sinister, and deep down, has never had any benign motives.

Who said I "hate "Derek & Clive? Hate is a strong word, Mr Demetriou. As I'm sure I said to you eons ago, I simply find them (a couple of inspired moments excepted) crude, offensive and above all unfunny. A once mighty duo at the bottom of a very deep personal trough.

I ask you this, Mr Demetriou: have you actually heard *everything* that D & C actually did?
You see, one of the LPs, although littered with profanity, is quite mild, (except for the fate of poor Dolly, which is grotesque), and does have some classic examples of cook at his best.
However, other recordings are nothing more than an opportunity for a bitter Peter Cook to dump the considerable quantity of bile, which had obviously been festering in his gut for some time, over the shell-shocked Dudley. This included cruel taunts about the loss of one of Dudley's parents to cancer.

As ever your observations are painfully accurate. I remember reading a history of the Roman Republic in which the author claimed that the patrician class ( with the notable exception of Pompei Magnus ) were more than happy to be portrayed by their contemporary artists as bald, ageing and droopy of jowl so as to better reinforce the plebs' perception that they were suitably experienced for high office.

Peter's piece is lucid and well argued - as always - he is right that democracy has been sacrificed by the over-wheening power of party and whips and that democracy needs to be re-claimed - check out this non-party political campaign and support if you can: [edited by admin: links to other sites not allowed]

Saying "sorry" is easy, and MP's WE ELECTED in good faith, have given some money back that they took in "error" or "by mistake", and within the rules, but what stands out now, more than ever is that we still have a full compliment of staff and MP's in our Parliament while so many people are not only losing their jobs, but their homes as well. These MP's simply "do not 'get it' do they"?

Many people say that the EU instigates 75% of our laws now, should Lisbon be activated, that will leave about 5%, left for our MP's to do so WHY do we STILL need a full compliment of MP's? It could be said that these people are taking our money under false pretences, and have done so for years. They are not instigating ALL our laws, they are just obeying EU Laws like the rest of us. It is time to come down to reality, if they want to remain in the EU, three quarters of them should be made redundant and there should be no need of a second "House" at all. They could of course, withdraw the very constitutional Treaty of Lisbon and put it to the people as they should have done in the first place.

I understand that the vast majority of people do not want any further integration into the EU, in fact most people want out of the EU The people have found out, at last, what our own MP's have done with our taxes, they are not happy. One person stood out among all the rest in showing the way forward by with holding her Taxes, for without our taxes, MP's do not get paid and neither do the EU.
Many people too here in the UK may well pay their bills but will with hold the TAX part until we are a free Country once more. We may all do an 'Elizabeth Beckett', that wonderful woman that even kept fighting for this Country's freedom from her death bed. She knew, without doubt our involvement in the EU was contrary to our own Constitution. It also puts the Crown in an impossible position and is contrary to the Coronation Oath so sworn by Her Majesty at Her Coronation. EU Laws are not in keeping with this Country's Constitution and we certainly cannot allow EU Laws to take precedence over ours any longer. Our Allegiance is to the Crown and through the Crown to this Country. It is not to the EU and never will be, it is not transferable.

Thank God for the Press! This article by Peter Oborne should be read by us all and acted upon; (local government has gone the same way - power being sucked up to the centre leaving councillors with little to do).
If we want our sovereignty back and to restore power to Parliament we need to retrieve what we have given away to Brussels or if necessary leave the EU.
Until this happens I have left the Tory Party and joined UKIP.

The members of parliament are a registered company (go search Dunn & Bradstreet- [edited by admin: links to other sites not allowed]) so this whole debate in an internal debate amongst corporate employees who impose themselves through a taxes etc. It's an illusion.

Have you perchance stumbled across that fabled, well known political tract "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes? I commend it to you, given the points you made about democracy. If you haven't read it before now, do so. You'll find it interesting.

Guy R. Brown.

I'm a Libertarian as you know, so wherever they appear politically, that's where my support will be. But where they may not be present, the options are limited. I'm turning off the Tories. I honestly envisage the future under the Tories and I fail to see any change whatsoever. It's depressing. Yes, they'll be better than labour, but we need better than better, if you see what I mean. Because the country is knackered and it's going too far now.

Voting for joke parties is all a laugh, but it's tantamount to a spoilt ballot - though I am rather interested in the hilarious 'Animals Count' party, simply because if I can't be represented, at least I should give my beloved pet cat a chance of having a say.

G. Whitty (aka the hater of Derek and Clive).

The EU when it was devised as a trading bloc with the abolition of tariffs and duties etc was a good idea. But it has obviously gone too far and no matter how much they tried to spin it as being about 'pooled sovereignty' at University, I never was wholly convinced. I've tried to be broad minded, but when you think that 8% of EU states' GDP goes on funding the bureaucracy, and when you look at those pictures of immigrants queing up at Calais to illegally cross over, it's just gone beyond the pale and support for it has to cease.

On the Boatang Demetriou Party prospects, there is one small snag. I can't afford the £500 deposit. Which essentially rules me out.

Who'd have thought such a paltry sum would be the deciding factor in a nation's salvation?

A bit of 'cut and paste', from a post I submitted back on the April 2008 thread, “What on Earth are 'Human Rights'?”, seems somewhat appropriate to the times we are living through:

“Doubtless under the judgment of the seventh Vial (if I have rightly explained it) we must expect this convulsion, vitiation, and darkening of the political and moral atmosphere in Western Europe to be unprecedentedly awful: the very elements of thought and feeling, of social affection and moral principle, whereby society and its national polities are in God's wonderful wisdom constituted and preserved, being so affected as very much to intercept all genial influences of the ruling authorities in its system, – to minister disease instead of health to each body politic, – and perhaps, with terrible convulsions, to resolve society for a while into its primary elements.”

(E B Elliot, in his: 'Horæ Apocalypticæ: A Commentary on the Apocalypse, Critical and Historical; including also an examination of the chief prophecies of Daniel', Fifth Edition, Vol. IV, Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, London, 1862).

Another thought provoking and interesting article and hope I'm not becoming a sycophant but I'm going to agree with you entirely (again).

People do not get the politicians they deserve as is so often claimed (ie. always blame it on the voters instead of the spivs in the system). We have a Party system that's the problem where the leaders at the top don't need thinking party members but compliant sheep to follow their centralist control.

All leaders need control first and foremost of their immediate supporters, not the public who are later on the ladder. The Party whips are there to whip free thinking MP's into shape. The whips advise promotion of only the most 'loyal' (ie. chameleon like career politicians able to bend their will to the prevailing winds).

Looking for the 'bottom' up you can see the disjoints between the people and so-called democracy and why barely half the electorate vote. First how does someone represent me, it is almost a silly question to ask someone too in the first place! That is the first disjoint.

The second disjoint is I vote for an MP who has policies set by the Party leadership. A sort of throw a dart at a dartboard attempt to appeal to the mass of the public. Barely 50% of any Parties policies I believe in. This is not 'personal' representation. This is a mass produced product I'm supposed to buy into but offends as many of my beliefs as it pleases.

The third disjoint is patent in major votes (Iraq War, ID Cards etc etc). Out come the whips to enforce an MP supposedly representing me to 'toe the party line'. The constituents are brushed aside, the priority is the Party. And as Labour has demonstrated time and time again it leaders follow the path of minority interest lobby groups and has zero ear to the people.

This isn't democracy and is it any wonder when you add your whip culture insight we have a Westminster completely out of sync to addressing the peoples opinions. Westminster is a boys club as relevant to its country as the Trabant Owners Club.

As the rot leaps out of the woodwork, what an unedifying spectacle it is to behold. First we see denial of the charges, followed by the concession that perhaps they have actually done something wrong, though, they were of course, only following the system and it's rules. As someone rightly pointed out, this smacks of the Nazi's cry, we only did what we were told to do. Having finally been forced to accept that they have been at worst fraudulent and at best downright dishonourable, they are now falling over themselves to justify their claims. One MP says of his trouser press expense, one needs to be well turned out in public life. Indeed one should but at ones own expense.

The contempt shown for the taxpayer is evident when one sees an expense for a bar-b-que or something together with a mars bar, clearly bought on the spur of the moment at the cashiers till but not crossed out when produced for reimbursement later on. In some ways, it is these smaller items for nappies and biscuits and so on that show an attitude of laissez faire about what is being billed to us all.

However, it is the gibbering mumbling going on today as MP after MP grovel before us on our TV screens with piteous mewings as to how and when they will be paying back the stolen money. "Er, um, I think, er, I will be able to pay back the £42,000 by, er, or at least, er hopefully, within the next week"?!?

It's embarrassing to see them first try to justify their behaviour and then when that has failed, now seek to look suitably guilty and overly willing to put things right, as if they could ever do that.

People say that too much is being made of this scandalous story and that the 'real' issues are being sidelined. Perhaps one should at least allow things to play out long enough to see a list of, who and how much, so we know who the worst offenders are. After all, if these people hold so little personal scruples and are so willing to sink to such undoubtedly low standards of public life, how can we trust them on any of the issues of the day?

Peter rightly points out, that in days past, being a politician was a noble, selfless and honourable thing to do. It was an honour to serve other people. Members of the Lords were duty bound to do their bit for their country and people and by and large they did. Clearly, in those days, people tended to have independent wealth which afforded them the privilege of serving others. They recognised that they were privileged by their upbringing and advantages and were willing to do something in return. Carping and sniping about the toffs (yawn, yawn) and worrying about the wealthy few having the power is misguided since they were spending their own money in order to perform what they saw as their duty. Nothing wrong with that. It is because we no longer have that system in society, that we now find ourselves in the mess of expenses claims. The socialists have tried to destroy the wealth of the upper classes in any case over many decades of over taxing so they aren't available in quite the way they were.

Perhaps now, we have a fairer system whereby independent means is not necessary to go into politics but it sure has brought out all the shameful little people and encouraged them to see politics as a career instead of a duty or vocation. More is the pity.

I think the way in which the reports have come out have been entirely planned. First we had Labour's spending on rather mundane things (biscuits, bar-b-ques, nappies, TV's), followed by such a typical type of spending from the Tories (chandeliers, tennis court piping), followed by the predictably boring spending by Limp Dims (so boring, I can't think of specifics). It's hilarious. The press have had a huge laugh and so have I. Though I think if we got the real facts, there would actually be a bit more of the Champagne socialists shopping list to be had amongst the Labour party expenses, but it doesn't make such a good story. At the moment they are all running true to form, apparently.

Just to mention, I've just seen the Limp Dems party broadcast. According to Cleg, we are safer (terror), greener (global warming) and more prosperous being in the EU. We are no longer an imperial country and we need to grow up. Most inspiring.

Since the onset of the property bubble I have watched the misery of young people struggling to pay massive mortgages for a simple place to live. I wondered at length why the Government did not act to limit availability of mortgage credit. I now see there was a clear conflict of interest. Ministers of the crown were using tax-free expenses to speculate in property and flipping to evade CGT. Thus benefiting at the expense of HMRC and exploiting young people and first time buyers. Brown's ministers were no doubt encouraged in this by his claims to have ended boom & bust. Excessive property prices cause mega-damage to the economy, high prices drain resources from productive manufacturing into speculative building. Indigenous labour costs become unaffordable in Global, competitive manufacturing. Only service industries & public sector jobs remain following the crash. Surely such dereliction of duty and naked conflict of interest is culpable. They are clearly guilty of gross misconduct & have defrauded their employers, the British public.

If a person was burgled and, after being apprehended, the burglar was told that if some of the stolen goods are returned, no further action need be taken, what would your reaction be?

To me the burglar would still be a crook and not someone not to be trusted in future.

Yet this is what we are being asked to accept regarding our dishonourable members of parliament.

In future elections, I intend voting, irrespective of party, only for a candidates who is prepared to disclose his/her total parliamentary expenditure since the previous election. If this figure seems excessive, then sorry, they are not for me.

As for MP’s who have already been named and shamed, yes, they should be compelled to refund any unjust expenditure, but such action alone does nothing to alter their character. They have shown themselves to be money grabbing and self obsessed, so sack them and let someone who is genuinely there to represent their constituents do the job.

Contributor John Demetriou writes:
"My assertion would be that things can't possibly change unless the people are once again re-connected with democracy and the workings of politics. I.e. for Britain to actually become a democracy."

The word "democracy" has, I suggest, become for our epoch one of those terms - like "love" and "justice" - for which everyone has both a natural desire and also, I would guess, his own definition. If we take the word at its face value, it is about "power in the hands of the people", as anyone with a surname like yours, sir, surely hardly needs to be told.
There are several problems with democracy as a regime. Firstly it is not specified which people should wield the power, for it is impossible to get any population to do or even think anything - except in times of impending disaster - in concert or unanimity. The effects of naked democracy as a power system is perhaps well manifested in some of our schools. The stripping of many teachers by unbelievably foolish laws and directives of effective authority over their charges, while nevertheless requring that authority to be maintained, has in some schools resulted in what might be called "pupil democracy".
People, young or old, gravitate naturally towards some authority or other - it seems to be, as the old saying goes, "in our genes" - and, when natural and traditional authority figures - such as parents, teachers and policemen - are either rendered impotent or too busy with other things to exercise their authority, the shepherdless flock thus produced will throw up its own dominant members around whom the less dominant members will cluster, whether out of approbation or prudent discretion.
Democracy will naturally appeal to a population long harassed by the arrogance of a privileged élite class but it gradually loses much of its allure, as people -at least people not besotted by mere slogan-mongering - see that the arrogance of the former élite was being matched, if not outclassed by the arrogance and often naked insolence of the newly-empowered 'people'.
As the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) had occasion to remark, the trouble with democracy is that it produces in people what we would nowadays call a "mindset" which was profoundly undemocratic.
Finally, despite huge injections of cash into attempts to make the citizenry at large as interested in politics and local political techniques as the few who genuinely are and despite generations of students being bombarded with political propaganda, the majority of people - and especially young married couples with children to raise - seem largely impervious to the delights of the national power game, preferring instead that of the local football team.
Democracy in practice makes little difference to the numbers of those who rule over us. All regimes in the end boil down to oligarchies. All tyrants, however wild, brutal and threatening, find themselves unable effectively to rule without the compliance and assistance of a cabal of selected and empowered aides and no democracy, however benevolent, can succeed in interesting more than a few ordinary citizens with time on their hands often through failure to succeed in other more productive walks of life.
We may as well get used to it, sir. We are always going to be ruled by a group of powerful people, whatever rather pathetic and unconvincing flag it may choose as its banner. Prudence therefore would seem to me to suggest keeping one's head down and getting on with the really important things like bringing up children decently and hoping that the particular power cabal that we draw as our lot may prove to be endowed with enough personal humility to withstand the enormous temptations to wrongdoing which the power they wield puts in their path. In any case there is little we can do about it, except not voting for anyone whose policies in any respect displease us. Compromise may be the bread and butter of politicians but for ordinary citizens it amounts, I suggest, to jettisoning some of the little influence over our rulers which still remains in our hands.

It's a pleasure to read Mr Demetriou these days, altho' a bit heavy on the the UKIP bashing? They are small and are at least doing something - Mr Hitchens is always comparing them to Dad's Army, and that to me is the best compliment.

But as all the Parties are not for yourself, I don't think it would do any harm to look at the non party political British Constitution Group - I personally wouldn't have any truck with anything that wasn't peaceful and legal and this strikes me as simply a GOOD organisation.

John Demetriou hates "to be so negative about the EU as in theory, it had the makings of a good concept."

Did it really? Would you care to elaborate?

There was an interesting piece in the MoS last week, which pointed to the whole thing being the fruition of a wartime plot by leading Nazis (knowing the war was unwinnable) to create a Fourth Reich by economic, rather than military means.
Sounds about right.

As for voting for voting for "The Boatang&Demetriou Party", well, why not? As long as my cross does not go against a Con or Lab candidate, then a vote for "B.A.D." would be harmless.

Even if MP's repay the money they have misappropriated this will not dispel the anger felt by the general public. A large proportion are guilty of fraud, pure and simple, and should be tried in a public court of law. Anything less than justice seen to be done will, I fear, result in civil unrest in this country on a scale not yet witnessed in modern times.

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